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A popular class of antibiotics will now carry a warning label after Health Canada completed a second review of reports that some patients using the drugs had suffered retinal detachment.

“Given that retinal detachment is a medical emergency, the recommendations of the Health Canada review were that the current labelling for oral fluoroquinolones be revised to highlight the urgency to consult a health care professional if patients experienced vision problems,” a Health Canada announcement said.

The bulletin comes four years after researchers at the University of B.C. first reported that taking Fluoroquinolones — widely prescribed for respiratory and urinary infections — increases the chances that patients will be diagnosed with retinal detachment five-fold.

Retinal detachment is a separation of the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye from its supporting structures, which can lead to vision loss.

Health Canada’s first review of the link considered only three reports, but at the time of the second review 22 incidents of retinal detachment had been reported, said lead author Mahyar Etminan.

UBC researchers raised concerns about the link to retinal detachment in a 2012 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association that examined the medical records of nearly one million British Columbians who visited an ophthalmologist between 2000 and 2007.

Subsequent studies have revealed other disturbing outcomes. A 2014 study by Etminan published in the journal Neurology linked the drugs to cases of permanent nerve damage, while a Taiwanese study published late last year found a link to aortic aneurysm.

Fluoroquinolones — including ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin, moxifloxacin, norfloxacin, ofloxacin — are a greater risk to patients than other classes of antibiotics because of the severity of their side effects, said Etmanin.

“What makes this worrisome is when a drug is very prevalent — in the U.S. there are maybe 40 million prescriptions each year — even rare events can lead to tens of thousands of people developing retinal detachment or neuropathy,” said Etmanin.

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Popular antibiotics to carry new warning about retinal detachment

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